False Signs (John Taylor Book 2)

by Travis Starnes

  “It’ll be ok, man. Help's on the way,” Taylor said.

  Underneath the vest, Wade had a simple white t-shirt, which had turned pink and red across it’s entire front. Taylor ripped off a section of the deputy’s uniform and pressed the cloth down on the wound, trying to staunch the flow of blood that continued to pour from the man’s chest.

  “Just hang in there, Wade. You’re going to be ok.”

  Looking into his eyes Taylor could see pain mixed with panic as tears leaked from their corners, dripping down the sides of his face. Wade reached a hand up and gripped Taylor’s arm weakly.

  “You’ll be alright. Just hold on a few more minutes,” Taylor pleaded.

  Wade’s mouth opened and his jaw worked, but a bubble of blood was all that came out. After another moment, Wade’s eyes rolled up and his hand slipped off Taylor’s arm, leaving four blood smear lines across Taylor’s wrist.

  “You’ll be ok. Come on, man. You’ll be ok,” Taylor kept repeating.

  At some point a hand gently but firmly gripped his shoulder

  “He’s gone, John,” Whitaker said, looking down at Taylor still holding the wound closed.

  Taylor staggered up.

  “God Damnit!” he yelled, throwing the blood-soaked fabric in his hands at the front porch.

  * * * * *

  Two patrol cars and an ambulance came tearing into the driveway of the house about ten minutes later. Skidding to a halt, the Sheriff stepped out of his car to find Taylor, sitting on the steps, looking down at Wade, his hands caked in dried blood.

  Kneeling down, the Sheriff looked at Wade’s chest, and then the bullet proof vest, before coming over to sit next to Taylor.

  “What happened?” he asked, more gently than Taylor would have expected.

  “They started shooting through the door, didn’t even give him a chance,” Taylor replied in a distantly calm voice. “Whitaker and I went over the railing, but Wade ... They didn’t give him a chance. The shooter went out the back door and when he raised his weapon at her, she put him down.”

  “What about the truck over there?”

  “Came out of the garage, two guys firing from the back just like at Mullins place. I popped the driver and the truck crashed into the trees.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “No. Whitaker cleared the house, but didn’t find anyone. She’s in there now.”

  “Did Wade ...” the Sheriff started to ask and then stopped.

  “No,” Taylor said, answering the unasked question. “He went fast I think.”

  It was a lie, but Taylor didn’t see any reason to tell the truth about something like that.

  “Ok,” the Sheriff said. “Show me the other body.”

  Thankfully, the conversation was ended when Whitaker came out.

  Taylor finally stood up, his legs still a little shaky. A combination of the come down that always happens after a huge rush of adrenaline and the emotional strain of watching a man die. Taylor rounded the house with the Sheriff and pointed out the body lying twisted on the ground.

  He had been too far away before, with too much going on, but now Taylor noticed the snake tattoo on the man's arm.

  “I’d bet this is Mullins,” Taylor said.

  Whitaker exited the back door of the house, drawn by their voices.

  “I didn’t recognize him when I shot him,” she said, joining them. “I killed our only real lead.”

  “He didn’t give you much choice,” Taylor said, “and it all happened fast.”

  “Did you find anything in the house?” the Sheriff asked.

  “No. Nothing for our case and nothing directly linking them to Julie. Have your people go over it just to be sure. Only thing I found were more flyers full of their rhetoric and a bunch of weapons and ammo.”

  “Sheriff!” a voice called out from the wooded area.

  Taylor and Whitaker followed him to the officer standing at the tree line waving them over.

  “We found something,” the officer said when they reached him.

  “What is it?”

  “It's ... you’ll have to see for yourself.”

  The deputy, who neither Taylor or Whitaker had met before, let them about fifty yards into the woods. As they walked, Taylor could make out a small storage building, which seemed to be their destination. Reaching it, they found the other deputy that had arrived with the Sheriff.

  The building was a small wooden storage shed, with a small panel for ventilation high up on one side and a spot for a padlock on the door, although no lock was on it now. The door was open, and as they rounded the side they could see inside was a dirty mattress against one side. Against the wall was a bolted down metal bar covered in scrapes and scratches across its surface. The source of the scrapes was readily obvious, as a pair of handcuffs dangled from it. The bar was close enough someone lying on the bed could be handcuffed there.

  It seemed likely to Taylor they’d just found where Julie had been held and, noting what looked like a spray of dried blood against the side of another interior wall, also where she’d been murdered.

  “Sheriff, I’m betting if you send a sample of that to the State crime lab, you’ll find its Julie’s blood,” Taylor pointed out.

  “That’s a safe bet,” he said. “We’ll take care of the scene here. I’ll have one of my people run you back to your hotel. I’ll call if we find anything or need any more information.”

  “Ok,” Whitaker said, walking away from the shed, back to the house.

  “Sheriff,” Taylor said, “could you tell Wade’s wife we’re sorry, for, you know, everything.”

  “Sure.”

  They rode back to the hotel in silence. Taylor had only met Wade yesterday and their interactions had been minimal, but looking into a man’s eyes as he died had a way of making it personal. More so because of the pleading expression Wade had at the end, begging for someone to stop the inevitable. It also wasn’t just the Deputy, Taylor knew. Wade was a stand in for all the friends Taylor had lost. Men he hadn’t been able to be with at the end.

  As they neared the hotel, Taylor did what he’d become good at. He pushed the feelings down and focused on the job ahead. They hadn’t found any of the missing explosives at the farm. If he and Whitaker couldn’t find them, a lot more people were going to die.

  Still, as he got out of the car and into the hotel, Taylor knew Wade would be one more face to haunt him at night.

  “Hey,” Whitaker said, stopping him by the elbow, “Are you going to be ok?”

  “Yeah. Just need a shower and then we can figure out our next move.”

  She looked at him intently for a moment, trying to get a read on Taylor, but he was a closed book. The sadness that haunted his eyes at the farmhouse was gone, replaced by the stoic determination she had come to recognize from him.

  “Ok. Thirty minutes.”

  “Sure,” he said, and headed for his room.

  Taylor dumped his shirt and pants in the trash as he stripped for the shower. Both were covered in blood and, from Taylor’s estimation, a lost cause. The shower did him a world of good. Even after he scrubbed off the last reminders of the farmhouse, he let the water continue to pour over him.

  Eventually Taylor turned off the shower and toweled off. Getting dressed in fresh clothes, he started feeling halfway human again. He was almost ready to head over to Whitaker’s room when she knocked on his door instead.

  “I thought I was coming to you,” he said as he let her in.

  “Dorset called. He’s sending someone to pick us up in ten minutes and take us to the airport. He wants us back in Dallas ... today.”

  Chapter 9

  The packing didn’t take Taylor long, considering he had only the one duffle bag and he’d just thrown out one set of clothes he’d brought with him. Even with that, he was only a few steps behind Whitaker when they checked out and both were on the curb when yet another non-descript black SUV pulled up with a male agent Taylor hadn’t met, driving.

>   He and Whitaker made a bit of small talk, but that quickly fell off. It seemed there was little secret being made of Whitaker being yanked home by her supervisor, although from the prying questions their driver made, the actual reason wasn’t known. Whitaker dodged his questions and before long they were being dropped off at the airport again.

  Taylor was a bit surprised at that. He got why they’d flown them out the first time. The FBI was a bureaucratic institution first and foremost, and the self-preserving nature of bureaucrats is to protect their careers. Taylor knew this was the main reason he’d gotten so much push back from his path of investigation. It proved the FBI's theories wrong and by inference put the blame of that misguided investigation on the agent leading it. In their world, being blamed for being wrong was worse than actually being wrong.

  It wasn’t a failing unique to the FBI. He’d seen it often enough during his time in the service. And that of course didn’t apply to the guys in the trenches. Like Whitaker, they took their duties seriously, even if they needed a nudge from time to time.

  So when a voice from several rungs up the bureaucracy demanded they assist him, they did just that. But their being called back either meant Dorset was willing to push back against the people above him, either because he thought they were wrong or, more likely, he thought there would be blow-back from what had happened today and he didn’t want any of it landing on him.

  Either way, Taylor would have thought that would mean a long car ride to Dallas, not a hop on the company plane. And yet, here they were at the small airfield they’d arrived at with the same plane, or one just like it at least, waiting for them as they pulled up.

  Which Taylor was having a hard time deciphering.

  “Why send the plane?” Taylor asked Whitaker when they got airborne.

  “It's Tony’s way of intimidation. When he’s going to come down hard on someone, he likes them off balance. And he wants us to remember that he has the balance of power between us.”

  “Seems a little petty.”

  “I used to think it was just strategy for managing problems. But you’re right. It’s petty.”

  “I’m not sure what exactly we’ve done wrong. We know there’s explosives’ missing and we know that Samar’s girlfriend was kidnapped and murdered by a bunch of home grown radicals with a serious hate for the US government. It doesn't take a genius to map this out.”

  “That’s what we think’s happened, but we’re going to have a harder time proving it. All we have is the murder of a girl who may or may not be connected to Samar. On top of that, my car being shot up and the stuff at the farm was all done in chasing a murder case we were specifically told to back off from. During which events a deputy sheriff was killed. Basically, we have theories with no support and a clear cut case of insubordination.”

  “I don’t work for him,” Taylor said.

  “I do.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  Whitaker turned away from him, staring out the window of the plane for the rest of the flight. Taylor left her alone to her thoughts. She was a good person, but she was still a Fed and by following him, she’d put her career in jeopardy, which mattered to her. Taylor understood that and even felt bad about it, but at this point there wasn’t much he could do.

  Taylor had a moment to wonder why he was still chasing it. True, Dorset was still focused on Samar, but that wouldn’t last much longer no matter what Taylor did. The Sheriff down there knew the connection between Samar and Julie, and had made some noise about it. Taylor would be shocked if the farmhouse shootout didn’t make the news as far as Dallas and Houston. A radical militia, a gun battle and a dead hero, in the form of Wade, was going to be too good for news stations not to pick up. And once they started looking they’d make the connection with Samar and the armory. Dorset’s case against him would fall to pieces in days, Taylor was pretty sure.

  But that still left the question, why keep going? He’d done what he’d promised to do, more or less. Of course, Taylor knew there wasn’t much chance of him walking away. Not with whack jobs running around with a mountain of high explosives. Years ago he’d taken an oath. He might not be in the service any more, but that still meant something to him.

  When they landed, Dorset had another car waiting for them, with another nameless Fed behind the wheel. Whitaker didn’t even make a pretense of small talk this time, and shut down every effort the guy made at finding out what was going on.

  Gone was the confident woman he’d first met. Even when she was a hard-ass ”Yes woman”, she had an air of security around her. Now she seemed on edge. He couldn’t help but wonder how much this crisis was professional and how much was personal. She hadn’t actually said anything, but he had a strong feeling that things had gotten personal between her and Dorset.

  The driver pulled into the FBI building’s parking garage and escorted them all the way to a meeting room. Taylor supposed Dorset didn’t want to chance him convincing Whitaker of ignoring more orders and go off on some other fool errand.

  The room was the same conference room they had briefed at just two days ago, although it seemed somewhat more ominous as the light through the windows quickly faded from day to night. Taylor took a seat at the conference table facing the door, but Whitaker just paced up and down the other side of the table like a caged lion.

  Considering the effort that had been spent getting them back as quickly as possible, Taylor would have thought they’d see Dorset as soon as they arrived. It seemed, however, Dorset subscribed to just about every petty power move a person could make, and left them stewing in the room for over an hour. Taylor wondered how anyone could be this big of a jackass, but considering some of the commanders he’d met in the military, he knew there was nothing exceptional about Dorset.

  Eventually however, Dorset ended up joining them. He burst into the room and slammed the door behind him. Storming to what Taylor thought of as the ‘head’ of the table, Dorset tossed a thick file folder on the table in front of him and grabbed the back of the chair, standing behind it.

  Considering he’d only been on the case for two days with little direct contact with the FBI outside of Whitaker, Taylor couldn’t imagine their exploits had generated as much paper as filled the file folder sitting on the table between them and Dorset. He thought there was a chance he’d open it and find a stack of random memos pulled from the bottom of someone’s desk or to-go menus. Having a thick, official looking file to point to from time to time, regardless of what was in it, was straight out of Management for Assholes.

  “What did I say?” He said after giving the meanest stare he could manage.

  “To me? Nothing. You did hang up on me, once though,” Taylor said.

  He knew Dorset was talking to Whitaker, but Taylor had already decided he wasn’t going to back down. He didn’t like bullies, and incompetent ones even less so.

  Dorset ignored him and looked at Whitaker, “Loretta? Was I unclear about what I expected from you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “What?” he said, finally acknowledging Taylor's presence.

  “I said, 'bullshit.' Here, in this office, you told her to offer whatever assistance I needed in my investigation. I assume from the fact that we’re sitting here having the riot act read to us, you gave her a second set of instructions. I mean, you had to'ave. Because if all you told her was to offer me assistance, then there’d be no reason for this little show. And I’d say giving your subordinate two contradictory sets of instruction is the very definition of being unclear. Hence ... bullshit.”

  “Taylor,” Whitaker said in a warning tone, circling round the table and coming up behind him.

  “No, Mr. Taylor’s right. It's possible you were confused about what I wanted from you. Is that what happened here?”

  “No, sir. I was clear.”

  “I’m not clear. I was told I had the support of your task force.”

  “Ohh, you did, Mr. Taylor. But that was before yo
u decided to interfere in a local murder investigation, and start a gun battle that left five men dead, including a law enforcement officer.”

  “So you still think this is all some wild theory, and Abbas was a fundamentalist extremist.”

  “We’re working on a lot of angles, but that is still the working theory.”

  “And his girlfriend dying just before the explosion was, what, a coincidence?”

  “I’ve seen nothing to say she was in any way connected with Samar Abbas. And even if she were, there is no evidence her murder was in any way connected to the events at the armory.”

  “You have his phone records. I’m betting it’s filled with calls to her.”

  “Like I said, there’s nothing saying her murder was connected.”

  “So you’re going with it being a coincidence that she was murdered by anti-government radicals just after someone blew up a US Military installation?”

  “We’re looking at it, but we need more than your guesses before we move away from our prime theory.”

  “And the stolen munitions.”

  “Yes, I saw that in Loretta’s last update. Our technicians disagree with your conclusions. We believe all of the material stored at the armory was destroyed there.”

  Taylor looked at Whitaker, who’d moved to stand more or less parallel with him, out of the corner of his eye. He hadn’t been aware of her sending Dorset regular reports and couldn’t help but wonder what had been in them.

  “Have your people look again. How’s your career going to go when another government building is blown up by these explosives? This stuff is tagged at the molecular level. That makes it possible to trace residue from expended munitions to be tracked back to the source. You won’t be able to sweep it under the rug.”

  “Let us worry about the safety of US Government property.”

  “You probably don’t even have that long, Dorset,” Taylor said, continuing. “Has the local news picked up on Julie’s murder? Do you think it’s going to take them long to tie into Samar and your investigation?”